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Do not preheat oven recipe

February 26, 2010 - 7:46am

frogdog

Do not preheat oven recipe

I have a recipe for sourdough bread where the bread starts baking in a cold oven. After the various rising and resting the recipe states "place the pan with the loaf in your oven, then turn your oven to 350 and bake for 30-45 minutes. Do not preheat the oven" Has anyone else heard of this? Does it sound right? Should I give it a try?

About baking bread starting with a cold oven, but I must admit I have never tried it myself. You might want to search around a little on the forums for advice about starting your loaf in a non-preheated oven? Good luck with it, anyhow!

I did this recently using a cast iron pot. I found the crust to be light and shattery--very bakery-like. I prefer a more substantial crust however. Still, I think it would be great for dinner rolls--I think next time I do rolls in my cast iron skillet I'll use a cold oven.

I have an old double oven so this weekend I think I'll do one sourdough loaf in the preheated and one in the cold. I'll post the comparison photos.

I have an old double oven so this weekend I think I'll do one sourdough loaf in the preheated and one in the cold. I'll post the comparison photos.

...inquiring minds plus the idly curious are eager to know. I place myself in the inquiring minds category and will be very interested in your test, as I would like to explore this method. Any info you care to give would be greatly appreciated.

I'm especially interested in your comment...

Quote:

I did this recently using a cast iron pot. I found the crust to be light and shattery--very bakery-like.

as I would like to achieve a thinner crust baking in a closed cast iron container.

I wanted to see what difference it would make to bake loaves from the same dough, one in a preheated oven and one starting off in a cold oven. In a previous post I mentioned that I had tried the cold oven technique using a cast iron pot. The resulting bread had a very light, shattery-type crust. It was an unusual loaf for me, but then again, the circumstances were not usual. We were at our cabin and I had no scale, no mixer, no sourdough.

Back home, I took advantage of my 1960 double oven to put the hot v. cold oven to the test. Because one oven is smaller, I used an oval Le Crueset for the loaf I started in a cold oven and a round Le Crueset for the loaf I started in an hour-preheated 500 degree oven (the pot was preheated too). I baked both until 205 degrees internal.

A cold oven is supposed to produce a good oven spring but that didn't happen here. The cold oven loaf collapsed where scored. I've never had a loaf collapse on me before so I suspect it was the cold oven. I don't think it was because of overproofing. After shaping, I only proofed it 35 minutes because I'd heard it was best to underproof if using a cold oven.

As you can tell, the crumb is very open. The bottom crust is burnt.

The round loaf came out looking better. Decent oven spring. The crumb was more regular (not necessarily a plus) than the oval loaf--but that may be because of the shaping process.

Still and all, these loaves were pretty darn similar. Taste was the same. Both had a nicely carmelized, crispy/chewey crust. I'll probably keep playing with the cold oven technique (esp this summer), but if I'm baking for company, I'll stick with the more reliable hot oven method.

The next mystery I need to resolve is how I got that shattery/light crust in the loaf I made at the cabin. Any thoughts??

I do this all the time. The point in doing this is to save the energy of heating a stone for a full or more before baking. If you bake on a sheet pan using parchment baking paper, you can skip the pre heat. I do cheat by waiting until I think the proof is just about done and then turn the oven on. When the up to temp beeper goes of, in goes the dough. So it's not cold completely but I'm not wasting much energy and the bottom crust is fine.

I just got a recipe for a no-knead sourdough that says to bake at 450 covered in a cast iron pot for 70 minutes. No peeking, no pre-heating oven or pot. Also, use the pot for the last rise.This will be my next experiment.

That if your oven normally takes a long time to preheat (over 30 minutes without a stone) then it might be wise to bring it up halfway before loading it. Or Completely cover the loaf and use convection which is faster in heating up the oven. It all comes down to knowing your oven and proofed loaf.

If your loaf is fully proofed, it will overproof in a cold oven so it should be placed in the oven before it reached double or was fully proofed, 15 to 30 minutes earlier.

A reminder to those who have a baking stone - remove it from the oven if you're doing a cold start.

Like Renee72 (and others), I find this works best for bread baked in a container (loaf pan / cast iron pot). Despite Ehanner's advice, I can't get it to work for a freeform loaf (and I've tried many times).

Its nice to learn that this approach also works for loaves baked in a covered cast iron pot. I'd love to see some photos from folks who have done this successfully. (My 5-quart cast iron dutch oven is a little large for the smaller loaves my family prefers, so I don't use it that much.)

I'm not convinced this actually saves much on fuel but it is more convenient.

I bake sourdough sandwich breads all the time and I never pre-heat the oven. I let the dough finaly proof in the oven with a pan of hot water. It usually takes 2 hours to double or even triple. When the loaves are big enough I take out the pan of water, turn on the oven to 350F and bake for 50 minutes. My oven takes 10 minutes to heat up to 350F and that's when oven spring takes place. It seems to me that the moist heat left from the hot water improves the oven spring and creates a nice crust. My husband and our son love their sandwich bread that way.

I've been baking for 50+ years especially sourdough bread ( have been using the same 'starter' for over 40 years ) I always let my bread rise for the second rising, before baking, in my oven with the 'oven light' on, warms it, just enough. Then once I am satisfied ( 1 hour or so ) I set it to bake...mine rise beautifully and 'everyone' says..." They are the Best" ( but what else would friends say.?? just works for me..Hope this helps....As Always, Happy Baking...Carl

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